Performing Department
Environment and Society
Non Technical Summary
Overall the goal is to advance several important contemporary issues in understanding the ecological aspects of outdoor recreation. This next five years of study will be an integrated social-ecological approach that will yield new knowledge on a key driver of ecological change in parks and protected areas--the spatial distribution of recreation use. Specifically the project will focus on three primary areas of study:Quantitative assessments of human spatial movement in parks and protected areas.Advancement of geospatial analysis to help understand the connection between visitoruse/movement in protected areas and potential resource disturbanceInvestigations of the human factors that impel spatial behaviors and park managerial factors that influence spatial movements
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
50%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
The project will have three research objectives which pertain to the overall goal of improving the understanding of the spatial aspects of visitor use and movement in parks and the resultant effects on ecological systems.Objective 1: Quantitative assessment of human spatial movement in parks and protected areasMy lab was one of the first to apply GPS-based tracking techniques to understanding human movement in parks and protected areas. Since developing these techniques in 2004, we have applied GPS tracking methods in numerous parks and protected areas to examine both social and ecological issues related to human spatial movement (D'Antonio et al., 2010; D'Antonio et al., 2013; Kidd et al., 2015). For example, GPS-based techniques were applied in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2008 to examine the unintended consequences of a shuttle bus system delivering visitors to a popular trailhead. By analyzing the GPS tracks and combining them with ecological data, we found that large numbers of visitors were being delivered to relatively small and ecologically sensitive areas. These patterns of human movement resulted in ecological damage in off-trail areas (D'Antonio and Monz 2016). More recently we have used GPS tracking techniques in Acadia National Park to examine the effectiveness of signs at confining visitor movement to designated trails (Kidd et al., 2015).The above research forms an important point of departure for examining spatial movements at both fine and broad scales. This project will advance the basic, descriptive knowledge of the spatial distribution of visitors in parks by quantifying spatial distributions under various use, activity type and managerial scenarios.Objective 2: Development of geospatial analysis approaches to help explain the broad scale relationships between visitor use and movement in protected areas and potential resource disturbanceAlthough compelling, most of the work in the field of recreation ecology has been performed at individual sites or in areas that are small relative to the size of protected areas (Monz et al., 2010; Hammitt et al., 2015). Few studies have considered landscape-scale effects, which are likely to be important because many species are influenced by conditions at multiple spatial extents (Gutzwiller 2002, Buckley 2013), and because many species' ranges and populations span large areas. Efforts to scale up existing studies to a landscape scale are fraught with conceptual and practical problems, not the least of which is a lack of understanding of the actual spatial patterns of recreation use and associated disturbance potential. Because recreation activity is not uniformly distributed across wildlands, disturbance patterns at small extents may not be representative of those at landscape scales (D'Antonio et al., 2013).Given the current state of knowledge, much room exists for over- and under-estimation of recreation disturbance and its impacts in various parts of the landscape (Monz et al., 2013). Recent work suggesting that non-consumptive recreation is displacing populations of wildlife from entire protected areas (Reed and Merenlender 2008) is in sharp contrast to overwhelming successes such as the wolf recovery in Yellowstone National Park (USA) that occurred during a period of consistently record high recreation use in that park (Smith et al., 2015; National Park Service 2016). Such disparities expose a clear need to better understand the broader-scale spatial patterns of recreation use and associated disturbance. Research to fill this knowledge gap will provide managers with better data on the spatial extents and distributions of recreation use and disturbance that are so essential for effective protected-area-wide decisions about wildlife and recreation management.This project will continue to advance approaches for characterizing recreation disturbance at broad spatial scales. Approaches that treat recreation disturbance as a landscape attribute in the same way that landscape ecologists might treat a specific land-use or land-cover type will be developed. Many of the methods will be adapted from established approaches in landscape ecology, which heretofore have seen little application in recreation ecology. A primary objective is to demonstrate how to quantify spatial patterns of wildland recreation disturbance at landscape extents (often tens of km2). The development of these approaches will be a key advancement in the understanding of recreation−ecological disturbance relationships and will help inform recreation disturbance management.Objective 3: Examination of the human motivational and managerial factors that influence spatial movement in parks and protected areasThe project will use paired social science and spatial data to explore how differences in perceptions, motivations, experience, physical ability function as key drivers in the resultant spatial movement of visitors in parks and protected areas. This component of the project will be exploratory in nature as little past research on the influence of these factors on spatial behavior exists. However, understanding the behavioral drivers will provide an important explanatory basis for the observed spatial behaviors assessed in Objective 1 and provide a better understanding of visitor experience and use of park resources. These findings will inform planning that can provide opportunities for optimal experiences that are congruent with management objectives for specific locations.
Project Methods
Objective 1The project will use global positioning system (GPS) tracking techniques to measure spatial patterns of recreation use in a variety of recreation settings. My lab has extensive experience with these procedures, having developed many of the methods and analysis procedures (D'Antonio et al., 2010). For example, on past projects, a random samples of park visitors carried GPS units with them during their visits. GPS units were returned to researchers after completing their visit, and the associated track data were processed in geographic information system (GIS) software. Various analysis procedures can be conducted with these data that provide a wealth of descriptive information including hotspot, spatial time series and kernel density analysis. A particular focus of this project will be the development of statistical classification procedures of data extracted from the GPS track data in order to more accurately describe general visitor spatial patterns in park landscapes.Objective 2To accomplish this objective, recreation disturbance will be measured in park study sites by mapping the location and length of visitor created trails, sites and locations of diffuse disturbance using survey-grade GPS units (e.g., D'Antonio et al., 2013). These features will be input variables in a GIS approach that allows for various spatial analysis procedures to be conducted in combination with the visitor tracking data described under Objective 1.For example, an innovative strategy to be explored on this project is the use of two different programs commonly used in landscape ecology: FRAGSTATS (McGarigal et al., 2012), and Conefor (Saura and Torné 2009). The number of metrics and means of analysis that these systems offer is diverse and highly relevant for quantifying landscape-scale recreation.For example in FRAGSTATS, for each recreation density location found in Objective 1, it is possible to determine number of ecological "patches" as well as the mean and standard deviation of the Euclidean nearest neighbor distance for the patches. Using Conefor, it is possible to determine the influence of recreation disturbance on habitat connectivity by overlaying maps of recreation disturbance with maps of various habitat types. Changes in habitat connectivity with the presence of recreation disturbance can then be determined for various species of interest (either plant or wildlife). Developing and testing this approach will provide managers with useful tools to manage both important habitat for species conservation and recreation use in parks and protected areas.Objective 3Visitors in protected areas may share particular goals that drive their movements, such as isolation or crowd avoidance, optimizing view sheds, or seeking proximity to natural amenities (streams, lakes, locations of wildlife viewing etc.). In order to understand the goals and motivations of visitors while moving through natural landscapes, social science-based survey techniques are needed. Several recent studies have paired GPS-based techniques with survey- based methods in order to examine visitor attributes that are explicitly tied to spatial locations (e.g., Newton et al., 2017). To achieve this objective, standard survey techniques examining visitor motivations, preferences and wayfinding characteristics (Manning 2011) will be paired with GPS tracking procedures described in Objective 1.In addition an innovative strategy will be explored. A paired-design approach will be tested using technology tablet computers (iPads) to collect spatially explicit survey data while visitors are interacting with natural areas in real-time. Instead of a GPS unit, visitors will be asked to carry a tablet computer during their visit. The tablet computer will use a GPS tracking app to track and record visitor movement. At timed intervals, a notification will alert the visitor to respond to a series of short survey questions related to visitor motivations, goals, feelings of crowdedness, and other experiential factors. Timestamps in the survey will allow us to pair the survey responses to the visitor's location at the study site. This work will be conducted on a smaller spatial scale in select locations that are feasible, but will provide important information to expand our knowledge of these phenomena.